Spring Inoculations have begun!!
We are super excited to start this beautiful spring with inoculations all over Massachusetts! Just a month into spring and we have spread the fungal love to Cedar Rock Farm, the Umass Permaculture Garden, and Cooley Farm. Logs, woodchip beds, stumps, straw, toilet paper, cardboard, brains the list goes on, now that spring is upon us everything is ripe for inoculation! A big thanks to Cedar Rock Farm and the Cape Ann community for such an AWESOME weekend of fungal fun March 22nd and 23rd. Over 40 people came to share and expand their knowledge and experience with fungi. Cape Ann will be rotting away soon with all sorts of gourmet mushrooms! We are really excited to see how the fungi we added to the landscape grow this season. Stay tuned for photos and updates. Hopefully later this month Fungi Ally will be returning to Cedar Rock for a full day of inoculating logs to start supplying the community with fresh log grown shiitakes! We will post on the site when that will happen, if you didn't learn everything fungal you wanted to that weekend in March join us for this inoculation bananza! In collaboration with the Umass Permaculture Garden and the GEM garden group at Umass, we inoculated and installed 40 logs to increase the fungal diversity and edible mushrooms at the permaculture garden. The garden already supports plenty of wild fungi in the walking paths including King Stropharia! We added shiitake and oyster logs to the mix, which will start fruiting next spring! This summer when the Stropharia fruits we will clone the specimen which has naturalized in the garden and spread it to other spots in the garden. Stop by the Umass Permaculture site to check out this on going installation. This Winter at Cooley Farm a small parcel of land was cleared for a potential orchard/berry garden. We are actively seeking plans for this landscape, contact us at fungially@gmail.com! The trees will be used for log cultivation and the stumps to grow oysters and maitake. We are chipping the tree tops and applying them back to the land to suppress the bittersweet, poison ivy and other invasives. In these woodchips our fungal friend King Stropharia will be growing throughout! The first weekend of April Gardenshare from Umass helped us with part one of the woodchip bed installation. We inoculated over 500 sq ft with stropharia and woodchips! On April 13th we will be continuing with this project and the log inoculation at Cooley Farm. All are welcome from 2-5 at 125 Montague st Amherst MA! Enjoy these spring showers and warmer temperatures, and get ready to strap on your boots and dust off your identification books, starting in May Fungi Ally will be hosting monthly Forays! The spring workshop series will wrap up with Gardening with fungi on APril 26th. If you havin't already signed up check it out here